Thursday, July 12, 2007

IPODs and Lightening

As a fierce storm with lots of thunder and lightening moved over my house just now, I happened to see this CNN article about the hazards of wearing an IPOD when lightening might be present.

I've been caught in such a thunderstorm while running outside a couple times. The storm just seemed to come out of nowhere and, foolishly, I continued running instead of crouching down low and staying away from trees or other tall objects. I never wear an IPOD while running outside, but if I did I probably would not have thought to remove it.

Please be safe, especially those of us who live in Central FL, the Lightning Capital of the U.S.!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

our paper had a similar article. Of course, it could be ANY mp3 player, Heart Rate Monitor or other conductive electronic equipment.

Of course last week, as I was recording audio for my upcoming Gravity episode, I was running and a Lightening storm came by... of course I was wearing an iRiver with Microphone, HRM, another MP3 player, plus the assorted watches. I did try to catch the thunder in the background but it didn't work.

Since I was on a time schedule, I didn't take cover or anything like that. I was banking on all the trees to have a higher charge that me and since electricity is pretty lazy that it would hit the trees, not me. This leads to have a contingency plan in case of a tree falling.

But regardless of the stupid stuff that I do, it does warrant attention to the weather.

ShirleyPerly said...

Good point about other common devices causing problems, too. For years, I ran sans any devices (not even a watch) but now I usually wear at least a watch and bring my cell phone.

Susan said...

Yeesh - note to self!!!!